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Katie Couric show on HPV vaccine sparks backlash

TV Personality Katie Couric speaks onstage at the 'Katie' Panel during he Disney ABCTelevision Group portion of the 2012 Summer TCA Tour at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on July 26, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California.

Katie
Couric’s talk show "Katie" has drawn ire from doctors and journalists for a recent
segment on the HPV vaccine that presented what it called “both sides” of the “HPV
controversy.”

The
segment included personal stories from two moms who claim their daughters suffered serious harm from the vaccine (one of them died). In addition, the show featured two physicians:
one who researched the vaccine and thinks its long-term protection
benefits are oversold, and one who recommends it to her patients, in line with
recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Dr.
Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone
Medical Center in New York City, did not feel it was appropriate to juxtapose
the anecdotal stories with the medical evidence. He had hoped more weight would
be given to the scientific evidence of the vaccine’s safety profile and
effectiveness at preventing cervical cancer.

“The
show was kind of inexcusable in terms of damage done versus positive
contribution,” he told CBS News.

Any time
you’re vaccinating hundreds of thousands of people, Caplan said, you can expect that some people in that population will have health incidents occur. But their ailments may not necessarily be connected to the vaccine. What needs to be weighed
is the cause and effect, versus what may be just coincidence. Mentioning such incidents in that
context would have been one thing, but giving them more air-time than the bevy
of evidence about safety and efficacy is another.

“The
problem in TV and all media, (is) the human interest drives the story,” said
Caplan. “In science and public health, it doesn’t, or it’s at risk of grave
harm.”

“If you want to do a show every day that spotlights anecdotal claims about the health effects of cell phones or curative powers of megavitamins or dangers of airplane contrail vapors, you can certainly fill up lots of programming,” said added. “But I don’t think you’re doing anyone a service.”

While the show has certainly sparked debate, what's not debatable is that HPV is a significant factor in cancer cases in the United States.

Human papillomavirus, or HPV, is an infection that is so
common that it will occur in virtually all sexually-active people at one point
or another. About 79 million Americans are currently infected with HPV,
according to federal estimates.

There are more than 150 related viruses that make up HPV,
but about 40 can be transmitted sexually, and some play a bigger role in
causing genital warts while others increase risk for cancers of the cervix,
anus, oropharynx (throat and back of the tongue), vulva, vagina and penis.

About 90 percent of genital warts are caused by the HPV 6
and 11 strains, while the majority of cancers related to the infection -- about 70 percent -- are
caused by strains 16 and 18.

But most people won’t have a problem. The CDC points
out 90 percent of all HPV infections, including the cancer-causing strains,
will be cleared or undetectable in two years without any treatment, with many leaving the body within
six months due natural immunity.

It’s the ones that don’t clear that are worrisome. Virtually all
cervical cancer cases each year – there are 12,340 new ones expected in 2013 --
are caused by high-risk strains of HPV, according to the National Cancer Institute.

That’s
where vaccines aim to help, by preventing HPV in the first place. The
two approved vaccines are Cervarix, which prevents HPV types 16 and
18, and Gardasil, which prevents HPV 16 and 18 as well as the genital-wart
causing HPV 6 and 11 strains.

Both vaccines are given in three doses over a six-month
period, recommended for females aged 13 through 26, and males between 13 and 21
years old.

"The
vaccines that are available right now are one of our only protections against
HPV," Dr. Nieca Goldberg, director of the Joan H. Tisch Center for Women's
Health at NYU Langone Medical Center, told CBS News in June.

A
CDC study in June reported rates of HPV strains related to genital warts
and some cancers have dropped 56 percent among American teen girls since a
vaccine was introduced in 2006, from 11.5 percent of 19-year-olds infected
before the vaccine was introduced, to 5 percent by 2010.

Dr.
Diane Harper, chair of family medicine at the University of Louisville who
researched the vaccine, told Couric that the vaccine’s
protection wears off after five years, so men and women could still be at risk for HPV down the road.

The
CDC, however, says studies with up to six years of follow-up data have found no evidence of waning effectiveness from the vaccine, a point Caplan also emphasized. One study found even one
dose was 82 percent effective, though all three doses are recommended.

The
CDC adds that if 80 percent of teens got all three doses of the vaccine, an
estimated 53,000 additional cases of cervical cancer could be prevented over
the lifetimes of girls aged 12 and older. For every year that increases in
coverage are delayed, another 4,400 women will go on to develop the disease.

That’s
not to that say the HPV vaccine, or any vaccine, can’t cause side effects.

The CDC’s
Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has received at least 22,000 reports of
adverse events in girls and women who got the vaccine between June 2006 through
March 2013. Over this time, about 57 million doses of the vaccine were
distributed in the United States.

Ninety-two percent of the reported side effects were considered
nonserious. They included injection-site pain and swelling, fainting,
dizziness, nausea, headache, fever and hives.

The other almost 8 percent of
serious side effects included headache, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, dizziness,
fainting and generalized weakness.